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Rescue employees in Greece frantically looked for survivors by flattened carriages and smoking wreckage on Wednesday after a high-speed, head-on collision between a freight practice and a passenger practice killed a minimum of 36 individuals and injured scores of others in what seemed to be the nation’s deadliest rail accident.
Kostas A. Karamanlis, the Greek transport minister, introduced hours after the crash that he would resign, saying in a press release that “when one thing so tragic occurs, it’s not possible to proceed as if nothing had occurred.”
“It’s a undeniable fact that we inherited the Greek railway in a state that’s not becoming for the twenty first century,” he added. “In these three and a half years we made each effort to enhance this actuality. Sadly, these efforts weren’t sufficient to avert such a tragedy.”
It was not instantly clear what led to the crash, which occurred because the passenger practice traveled from Athens to the northern metropolis of Thessaloniki simply earlier than midnight on Tuesday. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis instructed reporters after visiting the crash website that “tragic human error” had led to the crash, however gave no additional particulars.
The Greek police on Wednesday afternoon arrested the station supervisor in Larissa, about 20 miles south of the crash website, with out giving a cause. Greek information media reported that the station supervisor had directed the freight practice onto the identical monitor because the passenger practice, however the authorities declined to substantiate or deny these experiences.
The hearth service mentioned that there had been two individuals on the freight practice and 342 passengers and 10 railway employees members on the passenger practice. Lots of the passengers had been school college students and different younger individuals, Greece’s well being minister, Thanos Plevris, instructed reporters. Greek information media reported that lots of the younger passengers had been getting back from carnival celebrations in Athens.
“It’s a horrible course of for folks and relations,” Mr. Plevris mentioned.
Survivors described scenes of horror, with the influence sending passengers hurtling by practice automotive home windows or trapping them beneath buckled vehicles.
“Home windows had been shattering and folks had been screaming,” a younger man, who was not recognized, instructed a tv crew after surviving the crash. “There was panic within the carriage. An enormous chunk of steel from the opposite practice had come by one of many home windows.”
Video of the crash, which occurred moments after the passenger practice emerged from beneath a freeway underpass, confirmed the graffiti-scrawled passenger vehicles derailed, overturned and burned to a shell.
“Carriage 1 and a couple of now not exist, and the third has derailed,” Costas Agorastos, the regional governor of the Thessaly space, instructed the Greek channel Skai Tv.
As 85 individuals had been taken to hospitals with accidents, Mr. Mitsotakis hurried to go to the positioning and trepidation grew a few rising demise toll. Greeks started to search for solutions.
A railway official, who insisted on talking anonymously as a result of he was not licensed to debate the crash, mentioned that digital monitoring and warning methods alongside the monitor didn’t work correctly. That was partially due to finances issues and partially as a result of the system was not totally operational to stop such accidents, the official mentioned.
Yiannis Ditsas, head of the Greek rail employees’ union, instructed Greek tv that the 2 trains had raced towards one another for 12 minutes earlier than colliding.
Specialists famous that the nation already had the worst document for rail security in Europe and that endemic issues of upkeep had not been addressed for many years, even earlier than austerity measures enforced by Europe after Greece’s 2009 monetary disaster led to drastic finances cuts.
The European Union, of which Greece is a member, has binding guidelines on rail security, together with on situations for issuing security certificates for practice corporations, an obligation for member nations to arrange nationwide railway security authorities and unbiased our bodies for investigating accidents.
The European Union Company for Railways is chargeable for establishing security requirements in collaboration with the nationwide authorities and for monitoring and reporting on rail security throughout the bloc.
If an investigation proves that nationwide security requirements weren’t according to E.U. regulation, the European Fee might begin authorized proceedings in opposition to the federal government in query.
Mr. Karamanlis, the transport minister, who choked up earlier within the day whereas speaking to reporters on the website of the crash, mentioned later that he was resigning “because the minimal expression of respect to the reminiscence of those that had been so unfairly misplaced” and that he was “assuming accountability for the power illnesses of the Greek state and the political system.”
The prime minister mentioned that he had appointed Giorgos Gerapetritis, who’s a detailed aide, as a brief successor to Mr. Karamanlis. The minister was given the duty of establishing a cross-party unbiased committee to research the reason for the catastrophe, and Mr. Mitsotakis mentioned that the Greek judiciary would additionally do its work.
Greece is predicted to carry a normal election within the coming weeks, in all probability in early April. It was unclear if or how the tragedy would reverberate throughout the political panorama. However the crash clearly struck a nerve. The toll surpassed that of a 1968 collision involving two passenger trains close to Corinth, about 40 miles west of Athens, which left 34 individuals useless.
A spokeswoman for the Greek police, Constantina Dimoglidou, mentioned that the method of figuring out the useless had begun, and she or he requested relations of passengers to name a hotline for data.
Requested by reporters about the reason for the crash, Mr. Plevris mentioned that it was not the suitable time to concentrate on the circumstances of the catastrophe.
“The precedence now could be to nurse the injured and assist the households who’ve misplaced their family members. Every little thing else we are going to cope with afterward,” he mentioned.
However specialists and critics shortly raised their voices on Wednesday.
“Nothing works,” Kostas Genidounias, president of the affiliation of Greek practice drivers, instructed state tv. “Every little thing is finished manually,” he mentioned, including that neither the alerts nor the visitors management system labored.
“If that they had been working, the drivers would have seen the purple mild and the trains would have stopped 500 meters away from one another,” he added, noting that he and colleagues had incessantly reported malfunctioning methods not too long ago.
The nation’s railway officers have been conscious of the difficulty.
“Preventive upkeep has been a problematic problem for years now,” Spyros Pateras, the president of the Hellenic Railways Group, the physique that oversees rail infrastructure in Greece, instructed a transport convention final 12 months.
He mentioned that whereas the federal government had allotted 25 million euros, about $26.5 million, for upkeep, funding and employees have “been missing in recent times.”
Greece had already stood out in Europe for the shortage of security on its rail community. From 2018 to 2020, the nation had the very best railway fatality charge amongst 28 European nations per million practice kilometers, in response to a 2022 report by the European Union Company for Railways.
In 2019, the European Knowledge Journalism Community, a gaggle of media organizations, reported that from 2010 to 2018, 137 individuals had died and 97 had been severely injured in railway accidents in Greece, with a mean of greater than 15 deaths and 11 critical accidents per 12 months.
The media community attributed the issues to unsafe degree crossings, poor infrastructure and visitors administration methods, and understaffed corporations.
Vasileios Vathrakoyiannis, a spokesman for the fireplace service, mentioned at a televised briefing that the rescue operation was “at the moment focused on the 2 first carriages of the passenger practice, which have overturned.” He mentioned 4 cranes had been getting used.
The top of the regional chapter of the Hellenic Rescue Group, Yiannis Xanthopoulos, spoke to reporters as rescuers labored to take away the stays of one other individual from the wreckage of the 2 trains’ engines.
“It’s not possible to say who this was,” Mr. Xanthopoulos mentioned, however declined to offer any extra particulars in regards to the situation of the crash victims.
Tv footage confirmed purple cranes looming over the twisted, charred wreckage, as police and rescue employees in fluorescent jackets surveyed the scene. The military was aiding with the rescue operation, and the Greek minister for civil safety, Christos Stylianides, was coordinating the state’s response.
Vassilis Polyzos, a neighborhood resident, instructed The Related Press, “There have been many huge items of metal,” including, “The trains had been utterly destroyed, each passenger and freight trains.”
Mr. Polyzos mentioned that he had seen individuals who seemed to be dazed and disoriented attempting to flee from the trains as he arrived on the scene.
“Folks, naturally, had been scared — very scared,” he mentioned. “They had been trying round, looking; they didn’t know the place they had been.”
As evening fell on Wednesday, the acrid scent of charred steel hung heavy within the chilly evening air as an enormous purple crane lifted a hulk of blackened, twisted steel from the wrecked practice carriages.
Hearth service and cops warned reporters to remain behind a cordon as rescue employees helped them to retrieve the most recent grim discovery from the melded engines of the 2 trains. It was believed to be one of many two drivers.
Emma Bubola contributed reporting from London, and Monika Pronczuk from Brussels.
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